The Outlook for Barry Saunders

Rip It Up, Issue 216, 1 August 1995, Page 16

The Outlook for Barry Saunders

Hailing originally from Christchurch, Barry Saunders has lived the life of a musical troubadour: Australia, England, touring nonstop with the Warratahs (the band he fronted throughout the 80s), and now based in Wellingtons Breaker Bay, "just near where the Wahine sunk". This month he releases his first selfpenned solo record. Weatherman. Barry's got a bad dose of a flu he picked up in Queensland the week before, but sitting in Pagan Records' white interview room, he tells how the road, the seasons, and the songs have been falling for him.

Firstly, what happened to the Warratahs? “Well, the band had two songwriters: myself and Wayne [Mason]. It was a bit like two people trying to paint on the same canvas. It worked for a long time, and then it didn’t. The Warratahs were a lot of things, but primarily, I think it was a dance band — a show band style dance band — a good one. But this record isn’t like that. This is more song based.” Weatherman is quite a melancholy album. “Yeah, very much. I was taking a good look at things last year, when most of the songs were written. I do my sums every now and then, and this album is a product of that. I also realised that if I wanted to keep on doing what I was, I needed to pull finger and get on with it. Change t 00... you know, with the band stopping and not being part of that family. I mean, things weren’t constant, they were inconstant. That’s what the song ‘Brave Face’ was about... I mean, some days you just hope you don’t run into anyone you know because you just can’t look them in the face.” Do you like the road? “I like it a lot — the travelling and that. I like to see the changes in the seasons.” Do you think things have changed much around the country generally? “Things seem a little more comfortable, yeah. But then, I’m affected by the same things that other people are affected by, like economics and stuff. I don’t need a lot of money to live. One thing that has changed, though, is the emergence of the cafe scene. I mean, I came up through the pub scene — the booze barn thing — and then, once you started drinking, you just went for it [laughs]. Now you see people just hanging out.” What about the title Weatherman? “Titles are important to me, and I had this album and no title. So, I went through all the songs and found this theme of weather, the elements kept coming up. Also, there were a

lot of changes in the weather for me last year. Living in Breaker Bay also helped inspire that.” Many of the songs seem built around certain situations or locations. “Yeah, well ‘Olio’ [the breezy end note to the album] was written about a taxi driver that picked me up three times in. a row two Christmases ago. It’s a song about someone working, just doing their job. “‘Winter Sun’, that was written in Canterbury. That’s an airport song. I was standing there watching this plane fly up into the sun, against the alps. Someone else was in the plane. “‘You Can’t Go Back’ came from staying in a hotel around where I used to live in Sydney. I lived in Sydney for three years and it became a home to me. So, there I was, standing on a balcony of this hotel and being able to see the house I used to live in, and there’s somebody else’s washing on the line. It was just an observation really. “And ‘Reverina’ was a song I wrote about the old, beautiful pub in Hamilton, where the Warratahs used to play, and about the things that used to go on there... you know: ‘Get up tonight / Put on my clothes,’ and go out and play. They’ve since pulled it down.” Any hints on how to get those songs written? "Get the old antennae up and let them come along.” . On Weatherman, they do come. These 10 songs (all but one — a cover of Johnny Cash’s ‘I Walk the Line’, which Barry chose because he particularly likes the opening lines: ‘I keep a close watch, on this heart of mine / Keep my eyes open all the time’ — original) chart a year or so in the life of one of our most under rated songwriters. He’s a man who takes inspiration from Jimmie Rodgers, who was, himself, no stranger to the road. A weatherman you can trust.

GREG FLEMING